Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? (npr.org) 387
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from NPR:
Some researchers now see popular ideas like string theory and the multiverse as highly suspect. These physicists feel our study of the cosmos has been taken too far from what data can constrain with the extra "hidden" dimensions of string theory and the unobservable other universes of the multiverse... it all adds up to muddied waters and something some researchers see as a "crisis in physics."
The article quotes Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin, the authors of a new book arguing that "Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are." And according to this analysis of the book, what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world. There is only one universe. Time is real. Mathematics is selectively real."
The article quotes Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin, the authors of a new book arguing that "Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are." And according to this analysis of the book, what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world. There is only one universe. Time is real. Mathematics is selectively real."
Michael Moorcock Just Called... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Michael Moorcock Just Called... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, He was only really using 1 or 2 of them, lately. Not even touching the one I'm from, despite being first documented in only 1964.
Less than eye-blink, cosmically speaking.
pish posh (Score:4, Funny)
And in 1994.
And in 2005.
And in 2008.
And they're fixing it now.
I tell you what, from what I've seen, the script writer on this version of reality is a hack of the lowest caliber. And lately he stumbles from one ridiculous crisis to another without resolving anything.
I mean, have you seen that storyline about the tech billionaire that is single-handedly remaking both space travel and the auto industries? Preposterous!
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Bruce Perens is lower.
Usually has more to offer, too. ;-)
old wisdom (Score:5, Insightful)
what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found.
OK, good advice, now do it. If you think there is some massive new physics to be discovered, then discover it. When you do, you will be admired and respected for generations, instead of mocked by me on Slashdot.
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Re:old wisdom (Score:5, Informative)
Smolin & Woit have been harping on this a long time.
Go read The Trouble with Physics and Not Even Wrong, both published in 2006
They might be right or they could be (not even) wrong.
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Quantum theory would have them both right and wrong but how would that help us find the truth?
Re:old wisdom (Score:4, Funny)
Time is arbitrary, it is nothing more than a relative measure of change, how long that change takes is only relative to itself, the time it takes is only ever going to be relative to other changes. That duration in and of itself is completely meaningless. There are at least three greater cosmos, the microverse, the universe and the macroverse. A inherent balance of motion and size, represented differently in different ways within each verse. What exactly is going on in the microverse and macroverse, well trapped in the universe, we can only guess and hint at and try to make use of it as we are both to big and too small to effectively relate to them in any meaningful way, beyond hypothesising on them and trying to make use of the product of those hypothesises in our universe. Beyond the microverse and the macroverse, there is also the chaosverse and we all are a temporary extrusion from the chaosverse, the universe and it's associated microverse and macroverse.
Re:old wisdom (Score:4, Insightful)
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In some universe in the multiverse, there's an alternative Smolin and Woit who are vehemently arguing for the unreality of time and the existence of a multiverse against a mainstream that tends to assume that the universe is only as it appears to be.
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Quantum physics isn't reductionist, it's the basic building blocks of our universe, and it doesn't make sense. I don't think it's fair to call it "reductionist" at all.
Re:old wisdom (Score:5, Insightful)
General physics is more or less solved. It makes sense.
Is this a troll? OK, if not, then explain to me why there are three generations of leptons, not two or four or some other number. Why do the elementary particles have the particular masses they do? What causes quark confinement? Why does velocity have a limit, and why does the limit have the value it does? Why do any of the fundamental physical constants have the values they do? What about these problems? [wikipedia.org] Should we expect answers in a year of two?
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Re:old wisdom (Score:5, Informative)
General relativity is very different than particle physics. That's why Einstein chose to ignore it.
OK, you are a troll or just ignorant. Einstein is one of the great contributors to quantum mechanics and received a Nobel prize for it. [wikipedia.org]
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You're absolutely right. But it's also true that Einstein did not like quantum mechanics, and never made his peace with it before he died. One of the reasons he contributed to it so much is he wanted to prove it wrong. He would come up with things that he thought were preposterous, but would be true under quantum mechanics, like "spooky action at a distance".
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Einstein ignored quantum mechanics in the sense he left it out of GR as he could't reconcile the two. He later put forward theories for QM but never was able to update GR with them.
Not because he didn't try.
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The macroscopic world has ample unsolved things as well, such as inflation and dark energy.
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You gave a list of problems that don't fall under the umbrella of General Relativity, or do, but are problems that require more computational power than we have right now. General Relativity, is, by and large, understood at this point.
So when you say "general physics" you mean "general relativity"?
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> There are a huge range of problems in ... sociology and economics to which the rigorous, empirical traditions of physics are making major contributions.
Typical arrogance of the physicist that solves everything by reducing it to a point shape and ignoring higher order terms.
The problems in the softer sciences are not just rigor. Sure, many in those fields have a bad understanding of methods and statistics, but their field is quite different from physics. There is no underlying idea which can be used to
Old Nonsense (Score:2)
Firstly: particle physics is far from the only branch of physics and it makes zero sense to judge the "philosophical foundations of physics" by particle physics alone.
Secondly, it is hardly uncommon to have experimental measurement abilities and theorising out of sync. It was only about 75 years after the Schroedinger equation was proposed that we got anything like direct physical confirmation of the shape or orbitals.Gravity lenses confirming general
Re:old wisdom (Score:5, Interesting)
There's unfortunately a common attitude in the physics world that anything that the math allows - anything that you can't rule out - is real. Beyond this, I think the discovery of things like general relativity and quantum physics got us so used to the concept that the universe is wierd that there's few possibilities that come across as "too weird to be real".
On the other hand, it's sort of like saying, "we know little of the fish that live in the deep oceans, and we've seen fish that come in all sorts of forms.... since I can't rule out that there's a fish down there that looks exactly like Justin Bieber, then there must be one". The ability to deduce the existence of something based on what you can't rule out requires that you can be certain that your model is perfectly describing everything about the dataset that it's supposed to be modeling. But we know that they're not describing everything about the universe. We know that there's things that they specifically don't model.
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No. It's like having a model of fish growth that predicts there are fish shaped like Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Justin Bieber down there, and you already captured Elvis and Frank.
Your example is intentionally ridiculous, but seemingly ri
Re:old wisdom (Score:5, Interesting)
The good physicists say "This fits the math - so it's possible, let's see if we can make useful predictions from it and see where it leads". The trouble with assuming absurd possibilities cannot be true is that they all too often end up being true. The most obvious example in physics is Galileo - whose idea of the sun being the center of the solar system was deemed quite absurd by the orthodoxy of his time - yet turned out to be true.
But even in the modern age we've seen that happen repeatedly - notably with your example of the ocean. We found ceolacanth fossils since the 19th century and were aware that some 230 million years ago a fish like this existed. It was always POSSIBLE they still survived and had just avoided detection all this time - but nobody really thought it was likely, and indeed if you stated that possibility to scientists you would have been laughed at... until we found some living specimens and suddenly it was true.
Another example is the giant squid. We've had tales of them dating back at least 3000 years. And science rejected their existence as myths pretty much from the birth of naturalism as a field of science (the precursor to biology). Just another ridiculous myth of ancient people. Over the centuries evidence kept building up - which kept the conspiracy theories going, most notably whales caught with wounds that appeared to come from massive suckered-arms. But scientists wouldn't buy the possibility - and came up with any number of 'more plausible' explanations for the evidence before them.
They didn't get serious about the possibility of the giant squid until the 1850s when portions of one that had been stranded arrived in France. Today we know that not only does the giant squid exist - it's not even the largest squid around. The Colossal Squid is even bigger (we don't know which one Aristotle had written about - only that he didn't know there were two, since he specifically wrote about one gigantic squid much bigger than the common ones).
So we should at least consider the possibility that the Justin Bieber fish does in fact, exist. The biggest evidence for it's existence is that apparently they can breath air and one of them is currently a multi-platinum recording artist, based on the recordings from that specimen I would advance the conjecture that their air-breathing is limited and in an early stage of evolution (pre-booklung even) - more akin to a catfish crossing between ponds than a lungfish.
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The most obvious example in physics is Galileo - whose idea of the sun being the center of the solar system was deemed quite absurd by the orthodoxy of his time - yet turned out to be true.
A better one for the modern age would be anti-matter. It was proposed simply because the math allowed it. A few years later, they had experimental evidence of it.
But Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: But Seriously... (Score:2)
I do believe physics is a bit of an intergalactic game of gravity, mass, magnetism and momentum. Some say God does not roll dice with the Universe... but I say, he sure is one hell of a billiards player.
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It's the nature of our reality, and as we understand it, it doesn't make sense. That's pretty awesome!
It may be awesome, but it wasn't the lesson. The lesson was, it isn't intuitive; but it does make sense.
Re:But Seriously... (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're are postulates that even their strongest adherents admit cannot be tested at the moment, and may not ultimately be true. The authors confuse researchers tendency to argue in favor of theories with researchers overestimating the evidence.
The problem, as always, is people judging science by press releases, documentaries and the utter idiocy and ignorance of most scientific journalism.
Within physics itself, you know, the actual community of physicists, string theory is seen as an interesting model, but one that as of yet simply cannot be stated even in the most tenuous terms as an actual description of reality. That being said, string theory and other related theories have contributed a considerable amount to the mathematical toolkit available to physicists, so that even if they are ultimately discarded, they will have had their use.
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Posting to undo erroneous mod.
Stupid AirMouse ...
Re:But Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to recall the Quantum mechanics was a radical explanation for a real problem. Theory says that if you put a heat source in a black box the universe should be destroyed. This does not happen so the theory was wrong and we ended up with a theory was very difficult to prove. I have had professors tell me that the absolute proof of quantum mechanics, i.e. an experiment that could not be explained using an alternative theory, did not exist until the 1960's when lasers were used. That does not mean that an alternative theory will win out, but there is a great deal of support for QM.
Likewise, general relativity is only now getting empirical evidence that supports it as the most likely out of competing theories. We must recall that the impetus of general relativity was a lack of symmetry in the mathematics of Maxwell laws, having to do with identical magnets moving with respect to one another. Warped space is an elegant explanation for why things happen, but it may not be the best explanation.
Time is more complex. Right now thermodynamics, which is not considered as grounded as Newtonian mechanics, says the the universe evolves in one direction defined by the fact that entropy always increases. The are some measurements of the asymmetry of a nucleus that indicates that direction of time is a constant, but I don't think anything in physics right now decisively says there is an arrow in time, just an arrow in the evolution of the universe, which is why we don't have perpetual motion.
This guy is nothing more than the friction described in The Structure of Scientific Revolution. There are always going to be people who do not assimilate the growing accumulation of data, who are stuck in the current paradigm, and who will oppose all efforts to a paradigm shift. They understand that Physics does change, but they get hung up on disproving new theories and not their pet theories that they assume are already beyond reproach.
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On the other hand, we do think that the laws of the universe should be based on the same principles at all levels, so the fact that General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics do not mesh well is a problem we need to solve. If some physics people want to look for other ways to solve the problem fine
Yes, and one of the people in question has done precisely that [leesmolin.com] ("loop quantum gravity").
Likewise, general relativity is only now getting empirical evidence that supports it as the most likely out of competing theories. We must recall that the impetus of general relativity was a lack of symmetry in the mathematics of Maxwell laws, having to do with identical magnets moving with respect to one another.
General relativity, or special relativity?
Re:But Seriously... (Score:4, Interesting)
The other thing with quantum mechanics is we use it everyday, and we still don't know how it works. LEDs, flash memory and many other technologies we use today all apply quantum mechanical principles in order to work.
I suppose that's where the conflict lies - we assume a traditional model - science makes a discovery, engineers apply it to create technology. Unfortunately, these days it's a blended set - engineers may discover something and then ask science to explain it while they figure out how to exploit the something.
And understanding why is key - if we properly understood how LEDs work, we can make brighter, more efficient LEDs that last longer, and exploit that to create better say, OLED panels or even matrix LED panels (LEDs are relatively big, which is why we generally go OLED, but if we can improve thengs, maybe we can avoid using OLED and just have our screens made up of LEDs). Or flash memory that's denser and lasts longer (the buried or floating gate gets its charge put on and taken off by electron tunnelling, but we only have crude control over it - so electrons are left during erasure, and we damage the insulation during programming/erasure which leads to charges leaking off and limited life).
There's plenty of stuff where we know how to exploit QM to do what we want, but we can certainly do better. We know the how, but not the why
My thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have spent the last 14 years of my life studying fundamental theoretical physics and mathematics. I find a lot of the research in cosmology very unappealing, because it is way too speculative and far-fetched (multiverse, eternal inflation, bounce, cyclic cosmology, etc). And the mathematics behind these things is very primitive and simple, there is no elegance.
But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it. These other "quantum gravity" approaches that Smolin champions are completely disconnected from any kind of real physics, and they have not led to any kind of deep mathematical insights.
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So far as I understand it, at the moment the only real competitor for a quantum theory of gravity is quantum loop gravity, which has its own significant issues. This really is Smolin being disgruntled and trying to argue in the press what he has not been able to argue within the field itself. When scientists try to win their fights in the popular press, I'd say their motives automatically become suspect.
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> But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory,
That is judging physics approaches by how fun are the mathematics they induce. Which is exactly the attitude which is being criticized.
As far as 'primitive and simple'----a primitive and simple phenomenological theory which gets the core behavior right an
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The problem is that in cosmology predictions only predict the next prediction, and the data behind most of the hypotheses is worthless edge data.
Actual predictions about the distribution of stuff in space that have had good measurements are continuing to come in mostly wrong; for example, the Earth's radiation belts were recently measured and were not as predicted. A spacecraft recently made it to the solar heliopause, and no surprise but (spoiler alert!) it was not as predicted.
Compare that to real physics
Yes exactly, maths results (Score:5, Insightful)
But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it.
Yes, string theory is a bit different in that it hasn't been able to make any testable predictions, which makes it non-science. Science is based on the idea of experimental evidence, and falsifiability. It isn't science, it isn't physics.
Now it very well may have some beautiful results in mathematics. Maybe it will have applications and effects on topology, cryptography, who knows. But those things are mathematics, not science.
I tend to agree with Smolin that string theory, as currently presented (and I understand it), is not a scientific theory, even though it is interested and deserves its own mathematical research. The problem is, string theory gets the ratings, so we have more cosmologists and string theorists as professors physics, taking the few positions (and associated funding!) away from people that want to be true experimental physicists. That's where the semi-outrage is.
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True, String theory is good math. But it fails to make connection to physical reality.
Re:My thoughts... (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have something insightful to say, please log in. Most people with mod points don't like throwing them at AC's. Your argument is cogent, well thought out, and interesting.
People with mod points should be browsing with no filters.
If you are moderating an already filtered view you are doing it wrong. Also, what does AC vs another pseudonym matter, because if you're using past posts to moderate a current one, you're doing it wrong again. People share accounts, misrepresent themselves, use multiple accounts, so don't put any weight on post history, just read the post.
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Unfortunately, no one can determine your overall view.
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Re:My thoughts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quantum physics (Score:2)
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The entire point of the article is that not being able to prove them experimentally makes some of these ideas no different, conceptually, than religion and magic. This observation is hardy new, the same objections about no testable hypotheses = religion has been around for a very long time,
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That's quite incorrect. Germ theory did not even postulate the existence of discrete microorganisms, but even if it did, you can prove the existence of discrete microorganisms without a microscope or any form of direct observation.
Re:Quantum physics (Score:4, Insightful)
We weren't able to see germs until we had a powerful enough micrcoscope - but germ theory predicted that they existed, and that you should look for them and if you looked carefully enough, you would see them Just like the Higgs Boson - it was predicted for many decades before any instrument could detect it, and no one was really sure that it existed until it was detected at the mass predicted.
Much of string theory, as an example, is theoretically unobservable, in that no matter what you do you can never see them at all, That's about like saying germs are not just too small to see with current equipment, they are invisible by their nature.
Cannot measure it = not science (Score:3)
We may not be able to determine the nature of the universe as it relates to quantum particles, experimentally.
We experimentally test all sorts of things in relationship to quantum particles all the time. Having trouble parsing the point you are trying to make here.
Are the ideas any less valid, if we can't prove them experimentally (by, say, going back in time, or visiting alternate realities)?
If we cannot prove something experimentally (even in principle since we something lack the technology) then it is not science.
History repeats itself (Score:3, Interesting)
There was a time when humanity believed that everything could be explained by mechanics.
Higgs was ridiculed for good 50 years.This is no different.
String theory evolved great deal from where it was first formulated, thins that were not good are already invalidated.
There is no crisis of physics here, jut a massive layer of incomplete work.
Few points to add.
"There is only one universe" - sounds like theological clam. And just as unconfirmed ad multiverses.
"Time is real" - Einstein might disagree. Time is the imaginary part in the complex equations of space-time.
"Math is selectively real" - Only f the reality is defined by the capabilities of our brains and our technologies,
Re:History repeats itself (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no crisis of physics here, jut a massive layer of incomplete work.
that is a crisis.
furthermore there has been hardly any real progress in resolving this incomplete work/problems, for several decades.
you seems to have got confused.
"There is only one universe" - sounds like theological clam. And just as unconfirmed ad multiverses.
but we can confirm existence of one universe.
existence of others should only be included in theories if there is confirmation, not because its easier to do maths, by assuming multiverses, when working on some pure theories.
"Time is real" - Einstein might disagree. Time is the imaginary part in the complex equations of space-time.
depending on personal authority, however great , is not part of science.
your last sentence says a lot about what is wrong . theoretical assumptions should not be taken for unquestionable facts.
"Math is selectively real" - Only f the reality is defined by the capabilities of our brains and our technologies,
when you abandon empirical validation, which is what your claim implies, you are in the field of pure unfalsifiable theory, and thus theology.
gods or ghosts(and many other things) are also defended with claims about limits of our brains and technologies.
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Re:History repeats itself (Score:4, Informative)
It's completely different. The scalar "Higgs/6 other authors" field was never ridiculed.
Higgs field was an essential part of an extraordinarily empirically successful theory and was generally accepted as 'probably real' by the 1970's, but was difficult to find experimentally.
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"There is only one universe" - sounds like theological clam. And just as unconfirmed ad multiverses.
Consider two competing hypothesis: "there is an elephant in the corner of the room but it is undetectable" versus "there is no elephant in the room". Both predict the same outcome, but most would say the latter is the simpler explanation even though on a technical level this choice is arbitrary. Now replace the word elephant with parallel universe. Until we come up with an experiment that makes a testable prediction on the basis of there being multiple universes that does not have a simpler explanation *
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Thanks for correctly pointing out, that the AC's idea about keeping a Euclidian spacetime metric with an imaginary time coordinate is just one way (and a very old fashioned one) to go about it. Using an explicit Minkowski metric is much more common.
At any rate, it is absurd to assume that the authors of this manifest don't know 101 SR.
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There is a crisis, but it's been misidentified. The crisis is a PR crisis caused by tentative theoretical work being pushed by publicists as if it were validated and proven....leading to a crisis in public trust.
Physics depends on the existence of theories that are speculative. But PR insists on certainty.
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"There is only one universe" - sounds like theological clam. And just as unconfirmed ad multiverses.
"Time is real" - Einstein might disagree. Time is the imaginary part in the complex equations of space-time.
"Math is selectively real" - Only f the reality is defined by the capabilities of our brains and our technologies,
"There is only one universe" - We know there is one universe. From what I've seen, multiverse theory is not falsifiable. This makes it bad science.
"Time is real" - Einstein would not disagree. Yes, it is the imaginary part of complex equations, that does not make it unreal. Your suggestion is is just conflating different meanings of the term "real", and you know that.
"Math is selectively real - Only f the reality is defined by the capabilities of our brains and our technologies" - I have no idea what
I think physics has shown (Score:2)
that the "promised" sci-fi ideas of warp drives and colonizing space just will never happen, ever. This goes against the prevailing Western mindset of eternal progress and growth. Therefore physics and reality must be wrong.
epicycles (Score:4, Funny)
"Extra dimensions are the epicycles of Modern Physics" -- Mark Maughan
Mathematics is selectively real
I quite agree with this. Oftentimes, mathematics is rather complex.
Looking at the wrong branch of physics to trash (Score:5, Interesting)
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I always wonder what they mean by dimension. Does it need to be continuous? Why aren't the various quantum numbers considered to be dimensions? (And, in fact, aren't they frequently handled that way? Rather small dimensions, of course, since, e.g., electric charge apparently only varies between plus and minus one in steps of 1/3.)
Clearly I've never looked into the math, but in normal measurement dimensions can be things like month of the year, income, number of weddings, or whatever you are measuring.
Re: Looking at the wrong branch of physics to tras (Score:2)
This is the best, sanest, least biased post in the thread
Re:Looking at the wrong branch of physics to trash (Score:5, Informative)
Please use paragraphs... a wall of text is very unappealing to read.
Bad ratio of scientists to experimental data (Score:4, Insightful)
The time where you could find new physics in your average lab is mostly over. We often need huge, one-in-all-mankind projects like the Large Hadron Collider, the Hubble telescope and various other huge, super-powerful or super-sensitive systems to make experimental progress. They're massively expensive and take forever to create so maybe once a decade there's a new source of data. Meanwhile there's a ton of professors looking to research something, what's cheap to do? Computer models. Computer simulations. Not that I'm saying we know everything, far from it. But there's what we know, what we don't know and just a very thin slice that we're actively experimenting on right now. And we have our best and brightest working at CERN etc. it's the rest that need to justify their existence.
mathematics is not selectively real (Score:5, Insightful)
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It seems reasonable to assume that the universe follows some underlying set of axioms,
Why? The device which you use to make your conclusions (your brain) is good at estimating probabilities. But it's fairly terrible at distinguishing what you observe with your senses from what you observe as a result of its culling of information and whatever other information you imagine as a result of its inner workings. What makes it worse, the sum total of observations which we can make will always be a compact set. So we literally cannot observe the universe if it is an open set of information.
So on that level it seems entirely reasonable to assert that yes, mathematics is real.
No, i
String theory... (Score:4, Funny)
I guess that String Theory is knot for everyone---especially empiricists.
Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Funny)
https://xkcd.com/397/ [xkcd.com]
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Cosmology != Science (Score:2)
It's the study of the universe, which is interesting, and has some nifty things to say about the ontology of particles, but so does philosophy, to be honest.
If it can't be disproven, it's not science. It might still be a cool area of study, but not all fields of study are science.
Time is real. (Score:2)
Relativity Blues (Score:2)
When Einstein came up with Relativity, there was no way to falsify it, so it wasn't real science. But just about everybody who understood Relativity also understood that it wouldn't always be that way...tools would come along that could either prove it or disprove it.
Hilarious (Score:2)
The universe is far more strange than everyday human observation. Insanely bizzare
String theory like saying algorithm is O(n^a^b^c) (Score:2)
A theory that can't predict anything, that has an automatic 'out' seems pathological. String theorists may point out that they have proven that there are only so many consistent parameters for their theories, but it still seems there are no falsifiable predictions.
It's like someone saying the time-complexity of an algorithm is O(m^a^b^c). You then say - wtf? and they say 'Great news, we've proved that c can only be between 9 and13!. You then say integers? and they say 'Uh, NOOOOOO you idiot, obviously
Something is wrong but what? (Score:4)
Richard Feynman wrote in the introduction of one his books that one easy way to find out of a theory is bad is to look at its complexity If it isn't simple, it is most likely wrong. He went on to talk about how strange the orbital mechanisms and mathematics were before Kepler found the correct and simple solution to the problem that disproved nearly everyone in the field. With that he ends the introduction and delves into quantum mechanics.
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Nice case in point (Score:2)
How far has physics fallen, when theorist divas get insulted by the fact that their multiverse ideas are not backed up by the data?
http://backreaction.blogspot.c... [blogspot.ca]
(Pls read till the end when Sabine, an accomplished theorist herself, mentions the Streisand effect).
fubding (Score:2)
The physics analysis is not a controversial at all. The big controversy here is over what should be funded.
Cosmologists and quantum theorists are in good company when it comes to leveraging popular fantasies for fame and fortune. I'm a condensed matter physicist, and about every five years for a very long time we have discovered a material "stronger than steel," or that "will replace silicon."
This is now the culture of science (not just physics) because we have allowed basic research to become a profit ce
If it isn't falsifiable, it's not Science (Score:2)
Newton Wanted (Score:2)
The best model should bubble to the top until a better model is proposed. Multiverses and extra dimensions can produce models that "explain" (fit) observations, but they arguably lack parsimony and/or conservation of material/dimensions.
Maybe we are in an epicycle-like stage where we get into the habit of throwing more layers of circles at the problem (planet movements) until the next Copernicus/Galileo/Newtons come with cleaner models and formulas.
Is it that Galileo II hasn't arrived yet, or are we just ci
String Theory is still young (Score:2)
String theory is still pretty young. Yes, it has problems. It's very possible that it will be entirely thrown out and replaced with something else, eventually. I welcome healthy debate over the scientific method (I have to, it's one of the rules of said method), but I think some of this is blown a bit out of proportion. Physics being in "crisis" is a bit much.
We had gravity wrong for almost 300 years. Remember Vulcan [wikipedia.org] (not related to Star Trek)? Somehow I think this will be sorted, we just need hard work, pe
Multiverse: Does it matter? (Score:2)
And as a mathematician - mathematics is not "real", and never has been. Numbers do not physically exist, no one claims they do. But as abstractions mathematics can be a very useful tool in describing reality. As long as you understand the limits of your model. If for instance you were to say "Space has to be infinite becaus
Absence of evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
And what IS the evidence then for there being only one universe?
Same goes for time being real.
The article does not provide evidence for this, thus contradicting its own demand for evidence.
It is just bla bla blah.
Re: (Score:3)
People hate being told stuff they don't understand. And having to invest time and brain power for the slim hope to ever understanding it isn't too popular either.
It's much easier and more popular to listen to people who have simple and easy to understand explanations for that complicated stuff. Whether it's true doesn't really rank up high on the importance totem pole.
Re:Does this imply that (Score:5, Insightful)
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Proves you get only in math.
In physics you falsify.
GR and the standard model so far have survived every possible falsification attempt that physicists could think off.
To an ever frustrating degree, as this means there is no experimental hint to guide theorists, who have been ever further wandering off into Lala land.
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https://briankoberlein.com/201... [briankoberlein.com]
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Thanks for the tip. While we're at it, what are your thoughts on String Theory?
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Sorry, but so far the multiverse is totally in agreement with observational evidence. Now you may think that a singular universe is a simpler interpretation, but it isn't really, because then you need to account for selecting only one branch of the "probable futures". There are interpretations which account for that, but every single one of them turns out to be as hard to swallow as the multiverse. (From my perspective.) E.g., one of the interpretations can be called something like "super pre-determinis
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Then the problem is that physics can't even explain the observable universe, not that a multiverse magically makes sense.
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The multiverse (well, the ERP multiverse) is an INTERPRETATION of math applied to physics. It's not either religion or philosophy. Whether it's a correct interpretation is so far unknowable. (There are other interpretations that are equally valid of the same math, and perhaps they actually mean the same thing, even though the English translations are wildly different.)
String Theory is a different beast. It is a work in progress that, IIUC, still has too many Finagle Factors to be taken seriously. Perha